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Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Archives for October 2003

SCHISM OF THE ‘ISMS’

October 17, 2003 by cmackie

Because I don’t want to end the week on a sour note about Shrub and Der Grope, I’d like to point to Timothy Noah’s challenge to Tom Wolfe, yesterday in Slate. Will Wolfe take it? I hope so. I’d wondered why Wolfe’s entertaining polemic in defense of Edward Durell Stone’s white marble Gallery of Modern […]

TAP DANCING FOR DER GROPENFUHRER

October 16, 2003 by cmackie

So Der Gropenfuhrer has tapped a rabbi from the Simon Wiesenthal Center for his Culifornia transition team. Nu? The rabbi said he accepted the appointment, according to the Jewish daily Forward, because of “the assurance that this is not a partisan group.” More than that, the rabbi is already arranging a trip to Israel for Der Gropenfuhrer, notwithstanding his now-regretted […]

REVIEWS FROM THE BALCONY

October 16, 2003 by cmackie

The Gotham reviews are in. The score so far for “Golda’s Balcony”: two raves (Clive Barnes and Michael Sommers), one near-rave (Howard Kissel), one positive notice (Linda Winer), and one huge slam (Bruce Weber). If the variations make you wonder whether critics are worth their weight in newsprint, that’s not a surprise. Artists themselves, when […]

DON’T ASK WHY

October 16, 2003 by cmackie

You’ve probably seen references to most of the news events that Harper’s Magazine listed the other day in its Weekly Review. These aren’t all of them, just the ones that might have been a figment of Jon Stewart’s funny bone: A shoplifter in Amsterdam was kicked to death by supermarket employees. A lightning bolt killed […]

ACROSS THE COLOR LINE

October 15, 2003 by cmackie

Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to “30 years in Biloxi,” stripping him of “his Jewish star” and “his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor.” Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a […]

TARZAN AND DER GROPENFUHRER

October 14, 2003 by cmackie

The election of Culifornia’s Gropenfuhrer has spawned many articles about the meet-cute of fame and power, most recently Anthony Lane’s Talk of the Town piece, “Poll Stars,” in this week’s New Yorker, and Todd Purdom’s Week in Review piece, “Government by Celebrity …,” in Sunday’s New York Times. As Der Gropenfuhrer settles into Sacramento, we’re bound to […]

VIEW FROM THE EDGE

October 13, 2003 by cmackie

It’s hard to imagine a Jewish schoolteacher from Milwaukee with the power to plunge the world into a nuclear war. But after seeing the William Gibson play “Golda’s Balcony” (opening Wednesday on Broadway, following a successful Off-Broadway run), it’s not only imaginable but credible. Goldie Myerson, better known as Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel from […]

TUROW AND THE DEATH PENALTY

October 10, 2003 by cmackie

“The death penalty is probably the one legal issue that everybody has an opinion about,” Scott Turow said. The best-selling novelist is out on the lecture circuit promoting his latest book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “Ultimate Punishment,” which he describes as “a memoir by way of an essay.” I caught his lecture the other […]

MAXING OUT

October 9, 2003 by cmackie

Overlooked but not forgotten, artist Peter Max has designed a limited edition of a half-dozen patriotic posters to help raise $1 million for the proposed Pentagon Memorial. Here’s one of the six, titled United We Stand, and here are two others, God Bless America and Peace on Earth. The signed posters, which go on sale […]

TIME OF THE LEMMINGS

October 8, 2003 by cmackie

It’s already old news that the lemmings have spoken. But now that they’ve elected Arnold Schwarzenegger as governator of Culifornia, what’s next? Running Clint Eastwood for president? Re-animating Sylvester Stallone and running him for senator? That’s too obvious. How about doing something really subtle. Let’s join Sen. Orrin Hatch’s campaign to amend the constitution so […]

SOUNDING FINE

October 7, 2003 by cmackie

Ever since Lorin Maazel took over the New York Philharmonic, critics have lined up for and against and in between. Today’s Financial Times review of their performance of Berlioz’s “Roméo et Juliette” puts the case on both sides as well as anything I’ve read: The maestro “is a bit like that girl with a curl. […]

STIFFING CULIFORNIA

October 6, 2003 by cmackie

Here’s a story that might as well be satire because, if true, it’s so nefarious even Gore Vidal might not believe all the dots it connects among Arnold Schwarzenegger, Enron’s former CEO, Kenneth Lay, and the California energy rip-off. It’s also based on facts, unlike the tabloid tale in The Weekly World News headlined: “Alien […]

REACHING BACK

October 6, 2003 by cmackie

I see that Lloyd Grove, the new gossip columnist at the Daily News in New York, leads this morning with an item about Sammy Davis Jr. that “rips the zipper off the pint-size entertainer’s gigantic sexual appetites.” Oooh. And he got it all from Wil Haygood’s first-class biography “In Black and White,” just out from […]

‘LITTLE ADOLF’ SCHWARZENEGGER

October 4, 2003 by cmackie

By Jan Herman Have the chickens begun to roost? There probably wasn’t a pre-adolescent boy growing up in America in the immediate aftermath of World War II who didn’t mimick Adolf Hitler’s salute as a form of mockery during a game of King of the Hill or its equivalent. But “Little Adolf” Schwarzenegger was a […]

APROPOS OF NOTHING

October 3, 2003 by cmackie

Language is alive and wriggling. Herr Doktor Professor Alan M. Edelson sends along this tale: A linguistics professor was explaining to his class how the use of the double negative varies in different languages. In English, the double negative results in a positive statement. This is not necessarily the case in other languages. But, he […]

NOT BOB DYLAN

October 3, 2003 by cmackie

Probably no one has more admiration for the poetry of W.B. Yeats, “the industrious adept of a batso mystical philosophy,” as Clive James puts it in the current issue of The Spectator, than Clive James. Reviewing a new book of Yeats scholarship, which he harpoons under the title

THE TV BLUES

October 2, 2003 by cmackie

Am I the only one who finds the films in the seven-part series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues getting progressively worse? I think the best film was Scorsese’s on the first night of the series. The rest — beginning with Wim Wenders’ — have been missed opportunities. Very dull, though I love the music. Here’s […]

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Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

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Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

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